Why I won't be re-opening my restaurant on July 4th. Or any time soon after that
We had no idea. But on March 14th, at some point around 10:45pm, we presented someone with their bill for the final time. Before that they had probably had coffees brought to the table with warm almond friand cakes and dark chocolate truffles. There had certainly been five courses of food, cooked in our open kitchen and carried to the table by any one of the six members of the small team. Before that, bread and a selection of nibbles, possibly a martini in a coupe frosted with condensation. A warm welcome from the cool late-winter evening for a reservation made many weeks ago.
That was service, and that was how it had run at Vanderlyle for precisely one year.
We all know what happened next.
More than three months have now passed.
The handmade plates, bowls and coffee cups are still in storage, replaced with foil containers, paper bags and cardboard boxes. The pots and pans that we used to negotiate the bringing together of the dozens of elements across the menu now appear laughably small, no more than quaint relics from a previous age when portions were measured in fives and tens, rather than fifties and hundreds. The back bar is empty. The wine fridge silent.. The space on the wall dedicated to the ‘matrix’ that we used to conduct our way through service now lists the number of takeaway bags we need to prep and box up.
I still feel enormously grateful that, even now, I get to cook for a few hundred people a week. Our switch from Vanderlyle The Restaurant to #vanderlyletogo took place in less than seven days and I remain overwhelmed by the level of support we have received. I am delighted that we have catered for lockdown birthdays, anniversaries, graduations and postponed weddings. That our food still brings a small bubble of joy to people, even if it arrives on the doorstep or is passed over by a gloved hand, is incredibly rewarding.
Getting to grips with the practicalities of creating and cooking dishes that will survive a journey and reheating at home has been an adventure. I look back at our first menu - hastily created in the maelstrom - and compare it to the range of dishes that comprise the current menu and marvel at how far we’ve come. There is, of course, still room to grow. We added a cheeseboard which proved to be hugely successful. More recently we have reintroduced our non-alcoholic drinks pairings and this week will be sending out the first of our picnic boxes to enjoy outside in the warmth of early summer. We have plenty of other ideas percolating even as whispers of re-opening haunt the air.
July 4th. Independence Day. The great resurgence can begin. The resilient roar of a notoriously tough and resolute industry. Hospitality is ready to kick down a gear, rev its idling engine and race to full speed. I understand this eagerness and excitement, it’s impossible not to. And I make no judgements on those who choose to open at the earliest possible opportunity.
But our own approach is going to be more cautious. Vanderlyle will not be open for business as usual at the start of July. Currently, I don’t know what the odds are of us being open again before the start of next year.
At the time of writing, there has been zero government guidance issued to the hospitality sector. The continued prevarication over the ‘2m or 1m’ social distancing rule serves only to confuse the issues at hand. It’s a red herring far more than it is a silver bullet. Make no mistake: halving the social distancing measures will not halve the difficulties that we will all face when we re-open.
A lack of clinical decision making at the start of the crisis gives me little confidence that the government will successfully negotiate our exit from it. Lockdown easing in places as diverse as Florida, Germany and Beijing have all resulted in infection spikes and increases in ‘R’ rates. Covid isn’t going away. With no guidance about how to re-open safely and no support network if lockdown measures need to be ratcheted up again, re-opening a small independent restaurant becomes a gamble I cannot make.
Track and trace presents a further issue for those wanting to open up. A diner displaying symptoms of Covid-19, or who tests positive (and informs the restaurant) presents any establishment with having to make significant decisions - both financial and health-related - that we do not have the skills, training or information to handle correctly. This should mean a mandatory two-week shutdown for the restaurant to prevent any further spread. The prospect of taking reservations, stocking a kitchen, preparing a menu, calling staff back from furlough and re-opening, only to have to close again at a moment’s notice is truly terrifying.
In addition, there is the harsh economic reality of having to operate at reduced capacity. Most restaurants aren’t run to make vast profits. Most restaurants can’t make vast profits. Margins have been squeezed to breaking point over the last few years and even at full capacity it can be fearsomely difficult to break-even. I would be surprised if there was a single restaurateur in the country that has forecast at 30-50% capacity and been anything other than ashen-faced at the outcome. It is not a business model that works.
My final reason is one of expectation butting up against reality. We all desperately want restaurants to re-open because of what they are and what they represent. Because of the memories we made there, because of the ballet of great-service and the warmth of being cooked for.
We want to eat and not have to think about the washing up. We want someone else - anyone else - to pick a bottle of wine for us. We want everything from heat-blistered pizzas, blasted in an oven twice as hot as the one at home, to the full monty tasting menu and so many wines that you forget dessert before the final spoonful. We want cold pints pulled from pristine lines, freshly drawn espresso (in a cup!) and dry-aged steaks cooked over coal.
I want all this too. I want to cook and put your food on a plate instead of in a box. I want to pour you a glass of wine and tell you why it will pair so well with the main course. I want to make sure that for the two or three hours you are in our restaurant you feel cosseted, safe and embraced by our interpretation of hospitality. Can all this be done from behind perspex screens, gloved and masked and incessantly worried about finances or whether or not the restaurant will have to close for two weeks because of a single phone call?
For now - for me - the answer is no, it can’t.
There is too much still outside of our control. So whilst there are some elements that we can control we will continue to do so. Consequently, for the time being, we will continue to offer our food for takeaway, refining it and improving it and getting it to you in a safe manner.
Hopefully it goes some way to reminding you - and us - what we have to look forward to when the time is right.